program areas Digital Consumer

What connects cable, online and on demand viewers? NCC Digital Video. NCC’s approach to advertising reaches premium voter audiences across all screens. Only NCC has the unrivaled ability to target authenticated subscribers in a variety of ways across premium cable content and websites. And with our targeting technology, NCC can continue to target this subscriber as well as additional specific audiences throughout the web. NCC A+ Political Advertising gathers first party voter data from all 50 states and offers list matching Premium in-stream video ads run across all screens to an engaged, authenticated audience Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) facilitates ad insertion into premium cable programming in OnDemand viewing Premium High Impact Home Page and Sign-In page take overs give maximum brand exposure and impact NCC Political Media is proud of our partnerships with the most reputable research and data sources on US voters. Access to this intelligence allows us to provide you with superior intelligence on how to effectively reach the right voters in your preferred markets, on the best cable networks and online platforms. --- For more information, visit NCCMedia.com

Deep Root Analytics, a leading media & audience analytics company that creates data platforms for audience targeting and ad monitoring, announced today that it has expanded the number of audiences available with D2 Media Sales to enable political, corporate & advocacy advertisers to target Dish and DIRECTV households using proprietary audience segments. Deep Root Analytics has created 35 new proprietary audience segments based on their affinity scores on political & policy issues and interest in corporate responsibility efforts. These new audiences represent an increase in the Deep Root Analytics footprint to reach Dish & DIRECTV households above their initial announcement (link is external) in 2016 and brings its overall addressable audience offering to more than 60 unique audience segments. As such, Deep Root Analytics has pre-matched these segments to D2’s advertising platform, providing addressable TV advertising to nearly 23 million DIRECTV and DISH satellite households. “In 2017, advocacy and brand advertisers are navigating a tricky and fractured media landscape. They are especially keen to identify and efficiently reach audiences based on what they value and to drive their agenda and manage their brand reputations,” noted Deep Root Analytics CEO Brent McGoldrick. “At Deep Root Analytics, we are focused on helping them make their paid media as data-driven as possible. So, we are thrilled to work with D2 Media Sales and access their best-in-class addressable TV platform to enable our clients to directly communicate with nearly 23 million DIRECTV & DISH customers.” The 35 new proprietary segments created by Deep Root Analytics and made available for addressable advertising via D2 Media Sales include: --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/2ep1l0U (link is external)

Political data firms on both sides of the aisle have bolstered their addressable TV capabilities. Today, Democratic data firm TargetSmart and Republican data outfit Data Trust each announced new partnerships with TV data providers. The outcome should be even more TV spots, especially from congressional campaigns, targeted to households of key voter segments than ever before. Data Trust, the data firm that manages a national voter file for Republicans and right-leaning groups, has partnered with FourthWall Media to match FourthWall's cable viewership data to Data Trust's voter data. The result will be a feed of TV viewer data updated daily and matched against Data Trust's voting history and demographic data. It was a year ago at the Democratic National Committee's summer meeting in Minneapolis when Democratic data firm TargetSmart Communications unveiled the addressable TV and digital ad targeting capabilities it developed with data services firm Experian. Today, TargetSmart expanded its TV data offerings through a partnership with Tru Optik, which provides media consumption data for digital media and connected TV devices such as Roku, Xbox, and smart TVs. The company also has TV data deals with Rentrak and D2 Media Sales, which is a partnership between DISH and DirecTV/AT&T. "We're trying to get as many partnerships out there as possible," said Bill Russell, director of digital partnerships at TargetSmart. These sorts of voter and TV data deals are bringing the targeting capabilities of online advertising to TV ad buys, which historically have resulted in some wasted spending for political campaigns that would do better to target ads to desired voter groups rather than those less likely to support their candidates. The new approaches have grown in popularity following the 2012 election, when President Obama's re-election campaign famously employed innovative data-crunching methods for buying TV ads aimed at voters through programming rarely purchased by political advertisers. By partnering with more and more TV data and media firms, political data companies are bringing what was once accessible only to large statewide or national campaigns to smaller, down-ballot candidates. Through such relationships, political advertisers can reach pre-defined voter segments, such as likely Democratic or Republican voters, or custom groups of voters. --- For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/2wDaz4s (link is external)

Personal health wearable devices that consumers are using to monitor their heart rates, sleep patterns, calories, and even stress levels raise new privacy and security risks, according to a report released today by researchers at American University and the Center for Digital Democracy. Watches, fitness bands, and so-called “smart” clothing, linked to apps and mobile devices, are part of a growing “connected-health” system in the U.S., promising to provide people with more efficient ways to manage their own health. But while consumers may think that federal laws will protect their personal health information collected by wearables, the report found that the weak and fragmented health-privacy regulatory system fails to provide adequate safeguards. The report, Health Wearable Devices in the Big Data Era: Ensuring Privacy, Security, and Consumer Protection, provides an overview and analysis of the major features, key players, and trends that are shaping the new consumer-wearable and connected-health marketplace.“Many of these devices are already being integrated into a growing Big Data digital-health and marketing ecosystem, which is focused on gathering and monetizing personal and health data in order to influence consumer behavior,” the report explains. As the use of these devices becomes more widespread, and as their functionalities become increasingly sophisticated, “the extent and nature of data collection will be unprecedented.”The report documents a number of current digital-health marketing practices that threaten the privacy of consumer health information, including “condition targeting,” “look-alike modeling,” predictive analytics, “scoring,” and the real-time buying and selling of individual consumers. The technology of wearable devices makes them particularly powerful tools for data collection and digital marketing. For example, smartphones and other mobile devices already provide access to users’ location information, enabling marketers to target individuals wherever they are, based on analyses of “visitation patterns” and a host of other behavioral and demographic data.The report also explains how an emerging set of techniques and Big-Data practices are being developed to harness the unique capabilities of wearables—such as biosensors that track bodily functions, and “haptic technology” that enables users to “feel” actual body sensations. Pharmaceutical companies are poised to be among the major beneficiaries of wearable marketing.The report offers suggestions for how government, industry, philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions can work together to develop a comprehensive approach to health privacy and consumer protection in the era of Big Data and the Internet of Things. These include:Clear, enforceable standards for both the collection and use of information;Formal processes for assessing the benefits and risks of data use; andStronger regulation of direct-to-consumer marketing by pharmaceutical companies.“The connected-health system is still in an early, fluid stage of development,” explained Kathryn C. Montgomery, PhD, professor at American University and a co-author of the report. “There is an urgent need to build meaningful, effective, and enforceable safeguards into its foundation.”Such efforts “will require moving beyond the traditional focus on protecting individual privacy, and extending safeguards to cover a range of broader societal goals, such as ensuring fairness, preventing discrimination, and promoting equity,” the report says.“In the wake of the recent election, the United States is on the eve of a major public debate over the future of its health-care system,” the report notes. “The potential of personal digital devices to reduce health-care spending will likely play an important role,” as lawmakers deliberate the fate of the Affordable Care Act. However, unless there are adequate regulatory safeguards in place, “consumers and patients could face serious risks to their privacy and security, and also be subjected to discrimination and other harms.”“Americans now face a growing loss of their most sensitive information, as their health data are collected and analyzed on a continuous basis, combined with information about their finances, ethnicity, location, and online and off-line behaviors,” said Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy, and another co-author of the report. “Policy makers must act decisively to protect consumers in today’s Big Data era.”The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided funding for the report.The three authors of the report —Kathryn Montgomery, Jeff Chester, and Katharina Kopp—have played a leading role on digital privacy issues, and were responsible for the campaign during the 1990s that led to enactment by Congress of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).---Full report attached.

FourthWall Media and Data Trust announced a partnership that will create a unique feed utilizing Data Trust’s comprehensive data warehouse. Data Trust will connect FourthWall’s census-level television viewership data to its GOP dataset of over 190 million American voters from all 50 states. The integrated solution will help allied analytics companies build media and television-centric targeting solutions for their customers. “Data Trust is committed to compiling and providing access to the foundational data right-of-center political and advocacy organizations need to persuade voters and win this November,” said John DeStefano, president of Data Trust. “Combining FourthWall’s television viewership data with the historical data only Data Trust offers will help our customers access more complete datasets than anyone else.” Data Trust will use FourthWall’s anonymous household matching tool to sync with Data Trust’s voter file and create a unique feed of viewership information updated daily. Data Trust’s depth allows clients to append other information to those matched households, such as demographics, voting history and the like. As analytics firms and media buyers become more sophisticated, the ability to look at the TV viewing behavior of certain groups, such as first time Hispanic voters, becomes more and more valuable in the battle for votes and persuasion. --- For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/2wDaz4s (link is external)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Advocates called today on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject an effort by major media companies to eliminate or weaken important rules for children’s television. The National Association of Broadcasters, Internet and Television Association (NCTA), CBS, Disney, Fox, Univision, and others have asked the FCC to significantly reduce advertising limits on children’s programming. Industry commenters also urged the FCC to reconsider rules that require broadcasters to provide quality educational programming as part of their obligation to serve the public interest. In comments filed today, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy called on the FCC to reject industry proposals to repeal or modify the current rules. “The Trump Administration and the FCC should stand up for the rights of children and parents and reject this crass campaign by the broadcast lobby,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “The broadcast industry receives billions of dollars in benefits from its free use of public resources, including invaluable rights to the airwaves. It is unconscionable that TV stations and networks want to kill off one of their few remaining obligations to the public.” In April, the FCC issued a public notice on its “Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative,” asking for suggestions about which of the FCC’s media-related rules should be modified or repealed. Media companies replied with a deregulation wish list that would allow them to use kids’ television programming to market directly to children. The major networks urged the FCC to relax its rules prohibiting product integration and product placement on kids’ shows, arguing that YouTube and other child-directed online services are not subject to those restrictions. Advocates responded by pointing out that internet and mobile providers are simply ignoring longstanding children’s media principles, which are based on child development, and that a lack of online regulation is not a good reason for the FCC to eliminate important safeguards for the millions of children who watch traditional TV. “It is extremely disappointing that broadcasters want to join the race to the bottom when it comes to exploiting children’s developmental vulnerabilities for profit,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “Media companies want to gut longstanding safeguards because young people an incredibly lucrative market for advertisers. But research demonstrates that children are particularly vulnerable to marketing and benefit from rules that require ad limits and separation of programming and commercial content.” Advocates also oppose a request by the Internet and Television Association to repeal an FCC rule known as the “website display rule.” The FCC adopted this rule in 2004 to prohibit advertisers from engaging in “host-selling” to children, which the transition to digital broadcasting could otherwise allow. Angela J. Campbell, director of the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown and counsel to some of the advocates, called the effort to repeal this rule disingenuous. “The media companies say the website display rule is unnecessary because television has rarely been used to interact and target advertising to children,” she said. “But at the same time, these companies engaging in a practice known as ‘programmatic marketing,’ which offers advertisers the ability to target ads to specific viewers of cable and broadcast television programming.” In addition, advocates oppose efforts by media companies to be relieved of their public interest obligation to provide educational programming for children, and to produce public reports to help the FCC determine whether that programming meets the obligations laid out in the Children’s Television Act. “The television industry made a commitment to serve the nation’s children by providing quality educational programs,” explained Professor Kathryn Montgomery of American University, who led the effort to strengthen the FCC’s rules on the Children’s Television Act. “However, broadcasters failed to live up to these minimal obligations and the FCC has been irresponsible in allowing the industry to evade one of its only remaining public interest requirements. Rather than considering elimination of these rules, the FCC (and Congress) should conduct an investigation into TV programming and advertising practices directed at children.” ---- The comments can be read via the attached PDF file below.

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The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a leading US NGO specializing in consumer data protection issues in the digital marketplace, is pleased to respond to the request that we provide information applicable to first annual review of the EUUS Privacy Shield. CDD has been assessing the Privacy Shield since it came into force in 2016, in part as a result of its work coordinating the activities from the US side of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) working group on the Information Society. EU citizens and consumers who deal with companies enrolled in the Privacy Shield program confront a serious erosion of their data protection and privacy rights. The rights of EU citizens under the Privacy Shield program are not equivalent to how they would be protected by EU law. We urge the Commission and EU Data Protection Authorities to suspend the Privacy Shield in light of its lack of any policies, rules, or enforcement that would provide meaningful adequacy or equivalency. The Commission should insist that U.S. companies targeting EU citizens or consumers must operate under the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework. For this submission, we reviewed the activities of several major U.S. companies enrolled in the Privacy Shield program, examining their submissions on the U.S. Commerce Department website (including descriptions of their activities, the link to and content of their privacy policy statements). We compared these statements to the actual data collection and use-related activities conducted by the companies, including their own descriptions of how they operationalize their business goals. We supplemented this analysis with the information that CDD extensively gathers on the commercial digital marketplace, such as automated “programmatic” decision making and other contemporary consumer-directed applications. --- For the full PDF of the letter, see attachment in link below.

Public Knowledge joined by the Consumer Federation of America, the Center For Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of California, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse writes a letter urging the Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman, Maureen Ohlhausen, to protect consumer privacy. The letter is asking the FTC Chairwoman to publicly and expeditiously resolve a pending complaint concerning cable TV and satellite TV privacy. --- June 12, 2017 Maureen Ohlhausen Acting Chairman Federal Trade Commission 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20580 Dear Acting Chairman Ohlhausen: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has long protected consumer privacy, in tandem with other agencies, and you recently reiterated your dedication to protecting consumer privacy in the digital age through FTC enforcement. We therefore urge the FTC to quickly resolve the complaint filed one year ago by a coalition of consumer advocates. The complaint provides evidence that the nation’s cable and satellite providers have and continue to deceive consumers about their privacy practices by failing to provide adequate notice, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Since the complaint was filed, leading Internet Service Providers, cable and telephone companies have significantly expanded their ability to gather, analyze and make actionable data that is used to target subscribers, their families, and other consumers. --- See the link below for the full PDF of the complaint.

The new report by Cracked Labs titled "Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life" with contributions by CDD's Katharina Kopp, provides a powerful overview of the commercial surveillance infastructure, key players and trends. The report is available as a ten-part overview online (link is external) and as a free, detailed 93-page PDF (link is external).